(Personal) Review: "Zion Earth Zen Sky" by Charles Shiro Inouye

[MikeWaters]

It seems like life conspired to bring this book to me. During the pandemic, I started listening to some podcasts. At one point I decided I should try to listen to some Mormon podcasts. Maybe as an antidote to some of the True Crime podcasts I had listened to, that shine a light on the very worst of humanity (I could only take this for so long). So one of the very few times I listened to a Mormon podcast, I happened to listen to the Faith Matters podcast interview of the author.

And I liked it. Enough that I posted a link on FB with the blurb that I enjoyed it and it "made me think a little." One person liked the post in response. That person happened to be my wife's brother-in-law. I think I thought of buying the book, saw the $20 price tag and cheapness took over and thought "maybe later" and forgot about it.

Fast forward to Christmas day and my wife has gifted me this book. At the suggestion of my wife's brother-in-law, who is a prolific reader of Mormon literature and had read the book (and had noted my FB post). Later while we were opening presents my wife had me open another present. It was a second copy of the book. What? "You bought it twice?" My wife was confused. She looked it up and confirmed she hadn't bought it twice. We don't know how the 2nd copy arrived. An Amazon mistake? Someone else sent a copy? I took it as a sign that the universe wanted me to give a copy to someone else.

Now we're finally to the book. Or, are we? It turns out that there is a connection between the author and my wife's family. My wife's father knows the author from BYU. My wife mentioned this to me on Christmas.

I knew the book would contain Haiku from the podcast. In fact, a few months ago, I wrote some haiku on my strava posts. The idea that I might try to capture a moment in time. For fun.

I've read most of the amazon reviews of the book as well as the bycommonconsent review. None of these were adequate. And I'm afraid I'm not going to adequately describe it either. The book is written in the form of the arc of his life. His birth until now in his older age. While it is a memoir, it is not an autobiography. He writes about his own personal journey of learning, growth, failure, and meaning. This is a personal and intimate book. He includes things that are unflattering, he's not afraid to go those places. The kinds of things you might not even tell your best friend or spouse. You get the impression that he felt compelled to include these things because they reveal the path. But respectful as well, for example he didn't include the name of his first wife, I presume at her request, respecting the privacy of what was a painful experience for both of them.

Br. Inouye is a third generation Japanese-American. One of the strands in this book is his journey to understand what it means to be Japanese. He serves a mission in Japan. He studies Japanese in college and then goes to Japan to further study. He studies eastern religion, Buddhism, and over the course of his life seeks to understand how this tradition that is part of his family heritage intersects with his chosen faith, as a convert to Mormonism. His understanding of this far surpasses my own very superficial understanding. But this is not a book that seeks to make some grand integration - there isn't time for this, and he does not want to get overly bogged down in theory.

This is a book, I think, that one should read slowly. Haiku are interspersed throughout the book. After describing events, a haiku often follows which adds further color and understanding. I felt at times I was going too fast, that I ought to slow down, or maybe that I would read the book again, later in this slower fashion.

Another theme in this book is the author's journey from self to love of others. He is able to journey from nihilism to finding meaning through love and service. A few very significant spiritual experiences are included in the book, which marks I think the author's true belief and the power of the gift he has received to understand his path. These gifts are for him. The subtext however is that maybe there are gifts for you too, not in the same way, but in some way you might experience the universe profoundly touching you in way that changes your course.

In some ways the measure of such a book is the power of the book to change you. As Br. Inouye felt the sting of his failures, I felt the sting of my own. As I read about some of his service, I felt a sense of failure, where I have fallen down. A godly feeling of failure, the kind that makes me want to do better. In the last two days, for example, I reached out to a person I have been assigned to minister to. That I have neglected for fear of not knowing what to do, and not trespassing. God wants me to trespass, and this book has helped put the courage in my heart to do so.

I was camping in East Texas during part of the time I was reading the book. It was at a state campsite that my family had camped at some 35+ years ago one time. For some reason, it came to my mind that we should gather to this place again. Me and my surviving family, for out post-Christmas get-together. My father and two brothers came a day after me and my family. I mentioned this book to my father, he had not heard of it. But he knew the author's name. "I knew his brother Dwight." Said he took a pre-med class with Dwight his freshman year. I can barely remember anyone from any class I took at BYU. Said Charles' sister Annie was a homecoming queen at BYU. And that he has asked her out. What happened? "She said no." LOL. Such a small world.

Part of the book talks about the animism of places and things. That they have power. For example, a tree that is hundreds of years old might have spiritual power and significance. It's something that rings true to me, but not something that the people around me seem to get. I wanted to be at this camp. I wondered where in the camp we had previously camped all those years ago. When back home, I dug up a picture from that day, and realized we had camped within a couple stone's throws away, and that I had likely fished next to the very tree shown in the water in this picture. I dream of building a house in the place where some of my ancestors lived. My wife doesn't get it. My sense of self is not just my body. I need to be connected. I think of the significance of Br. Inouye visiting his ancestral family home in Japan.

While at this camp, after my father and brothers arrived, that evening I heard a tremendous crack, like a rifle. It was twilight. My brain couldn't comprehend the sound. It was fractionally too long to be a gunshot. It was followed a second later by a tremendous shaking boom. A 100 foot pine tree 300 yards from us had fallen. On a still evening. The power was impressive, in a way that I could only comprehend by experiencing this. Seeing videos is not the same. There is a marker at the camp, that memorializes three 13 year old scouts that died in 1973 on the same day. Must have drowned, I thought. When I got home, I looked up what happened. There is a 1973 article that says a tree fell on them in high winds and killed them. Synchronicity. Like I was meant to understand this.

At home after the camp, I finished reading the book. Br. Inouye mentions in passing his love of St. Matthew's Passion by Bach. I had listened to part of this piece on youtube that very morning, for the first time in my life, having never been previously aware of it. Synchronicity.

It feels like this book was meant to come into my life. Not that it was written for me. But that I was meant to read it, and something in my life would change because of it. On this abandoned website, I have no idea if anyone will even read this. But maybe if you are here, and you read this, you were meant to read this book too.

[MikeWaters]

Addendum:

When I got home, I was curious and looked up Dwight Inouye. The person my father had known from a class together. Charles' brother. Dwight died one year ago from COVID, after decades as a small town doctor in the town/area he had grown up. As I read about his life in his obituary, I thought of the tremendous blessings he must have brought to so many. That no one could have anticipated when this Japanese family moved to this rural area of Utah after WWII. That the local Mormons offering the use of the chapel for his young sister's funeral would lead to such an impact.

Part of this book is that you get a sense of the generational impacts as life unfolds. That we are all connected.